But, me? I was trying to move out, get my stuff together and maybe move to New York. I didn’t want to go to college, for what? I still had my boombox, all my shoes and some tapes. Some friends of mine who went to art school here told me that there was some spacey stuff happening in New York. The Lower East Side, there, you could live for real cheap. But, every time I thought about leaving, my heart hurt.

I wanted to be British. Like on this crazy new channel called MTV, those videos with the black makeup and those synthesizer beats. Made me forget about Reagan. That friend I was telling you about, Memo, he would say, “Reagan isn’t the problem, mujer, he lets people like me and you in to this country every day, its those damn hippies in Berkeley—those are stopping us from getting rights. You think they care about us? Nothing but white people feeling sorry, de veras.” And my stomach would hurt because I wanted to cry, how could he believe that? I thought how weird it was that after all these Mexicans came here, like me, that they suddenly loved the government and everything that could possibly hurt them.

My bra was too tight. I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to go back home, thinking I was never gonna find work. Black Casio calculator watch, the one I bought last week, beeped. It was seven. Stores were closing and today’s newspapers were useless in trying to find a job. Fog was over the city. Grabbed my scarf, wrapped it tighter around my neck. I turned a corner, getting back on Geary street when I saw an older lady, long black hair and dark brown skin: I heard her talking to her little daughter. I could barely understand what she was saying to her, but it was in Spanish, and the little girl was starting to cry, she was wearing a tiny red coat and some doll shoes. I stopped, turned my boombox off. Without saying anything, my eyes began to get watery. They were walking towards me, up Geary, towards downtown, I guessed. I put the boombox down on the sidewalk and tried not to look at them. Even though my heart was starting to hurt, the beats making me move (I could never stay still when it hurt because it felt so strange), I still looked. The lady looked old, her face wrinkled, no one walking down the sidewalk looked at them. I just moved over, against the glass window of a coffee shop. They neared, walked passed me, the little girl running ahead of the lady. “Catarina, ven para aca, Catarina!” the lady yelled at the little girl. Watching them pass, the lady brushed against me on the crowded sidewalk. And warmth filled my stomach.